Split Screen: Creations from the id

Many words can be used to describe the Electronic Entertainment Expo, and one of the main ones is “loud”. Attempting to find a quiet corner where we could have a talk about Rage, the id Tech engine that powers it, and the design philosophies of id Software with creative director Tim Willits, we ended up huddled under a staircase, shouting into my voice recorder.

Willits spoke with enthusiasm and humour, describing the role of creative director as, among other things, “scapegoat, cheerleader, and whipping boy”. “If the game is good, everyone on the team gives themselves a pat on the back,” he told me, with a laugh. “If it’s bad, everybody says ‘Willits’s fault!’”

Rage will combine first-person shooting and high-speed racing in a huge post-apocalyptic world.

First we discussed why id’s next game, Rage, has taken so long to arrive. id’s last major game developed in-house was Doom 3 in 2004. Since then they have created a few second-tier products, such as iPhone versions of their classic PC games, and they have helped with the third-party development of their licensed properties, such as Splash Damage’s Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Raven’s Wolfenstein reboot. Rage was first formally announced almost four years ago.

“The origins of Rage lie back with the development of megatexture technology,” Willits explained. “After Quake Wars: Enemy Territory came out, we started working on that technology, and started work in a different game altogether. Eventually we abandoned that game and switched over to Rage.”

Willits believes that one of id Software’s strengths is that it is a small, focused team. The downside of that, though, is that they would end up with the same team working on the technology behind a game and the game itself at the same time. “Working on an engine and a game at the same time, that takes time,” Willits said. Of course, one of the big time-savers in game development is to use someone else’s engine, but Willits laughed at the idea. “We like to say that if you license technology, then you’re just making a mod,” he joked.

Now that id has teamed up with Bethesda, however, a lot of the pressure has been taken off. “Working with Bethesda has allowed us to build a second team, which cuts our development time in half.” id now has dedicated teams working on the new id Tech 5 engine and on the two upcoming games that are using that engine, Rage and Doom 4 (rumoured to be coming in 2012).

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Before E3, the big question I had about Rage would be whether it would be able to break what I call “the id curse”. While id’s engines have been huge successes, licensed by many studios to act as the technological foundation for dozens of popular games, id’s own flagship games that have launched those engines have not exactly met with universal critical acclaim. The conventional wisdom tends to be that id makes great engines and only so-so games.

The main culprit for this “curse” is Doom 3, which was the launch title for id Tech 4. While it looked incredible on release, with its dynamic lights, realistic shadows, and detailed models and textures, gameplay-wise many felt it was far too simplistic. Before that, Quake III Arena, while extremely popular, was criticised for not progressing with developments in game design, and was compared unfavourably by some to its arch rival Unreal Tournament.

I had a good session playing Rage and got a good feel for it. As should be expected from the studio of John Carmack, it is at its core a straight-up first person shooter. Fr the most part, you’re one guy with a whole lot of guns, blowing away hordes of enemies. Willits was keen to stress that there is more to it than that, though.

“With the vehicle racing, the ammo types, the item engineering and so on, there’s a lot there,” he explained. “For example, as you progress through the game you will learn that particular ammo types are more effective against particular armour types.”

As well as interchangeable ammo types, Rage features a lot of other tactical options, such as silent throwing blades, explosive-rigged radio controlled cars, and robotic drone turrets that follow you around and attack your enemies. Thankfully, none of these features detracted from the FPS action aspect; the controls to activate these items are slick and intuitive, allowing you to deploy them and get on with the action.

“Getting on with it” has been an important design philosophy for Id while making Rage. Willits told me one story about the character animation when getting in and out of vehicles. “Originally we had this animation where you’d kind of crawl into your buggy. It was really cool for maybe five times, but then you just wanted to – snap! – get in, be done, and go.” Essentially, anything that bogged down the action was cut.

Even the item engineering is streamlined. Players can collect pieces of junk around the post-apocalyptic wasteland world of Rage and fashion them into useful items. The system is quick and easy to use – you learn a “recipe” and if you have the parts you simply pick it from a menu and select how many you want to build. Parts can be found in the world, or bought from shops.

Willits explained that this will also add some depth to the game. “A lot of the components are used in several different engineering items, like sentry bots, turrets, and so on, so you can’t make everything all the time.” When you only have so many components, you have to be selective about what you build, so Rage will encourage you to think about your style of play and make items that suit you.

Of course, many gamers won’t want any of this extraneous stuff at all, and will be after Carmack-style FPS purity, and Willits assured me that these players will be well catered to. “When we announced the game, some people were saying, oh, you have to drive, and there’s all this stuff... But when people get into it and play it, they get it. Some people like the RC bomb cars, other people use the turrets. Then there are the guys who’ll say ‘Give me a shotgun, I don’t care about anything else.”

Thankfully, the pure FPS aspects of the game are solid. It may still prove to be too simplistic for some players who demand something a bit more sophisticated, but I think Rage has a solid chance of finally cracking the “id curse”. I enjoyed my time with it, and look forward to playing the finished product when it is released in October.